Deception IV: Blood Ties - Review

Posted: 04/04/14

A word of advice to any foolish mortal about to set foot inside the house of the Devil: Watch out. It’s a trap.

You might get hit by a falling boulder, or fall prey to a swinging axe blade. You might step on a rake that pops up to smack you square in the face. Next thing you know, you’re caught up in an elaborate series of contraptions that knock you around the room like some diabolical Rube Goldberg machine. You will know humiliation, you will know pain, and your hopes and dreams will perish with you.

In short, the good guys in Deception IV are completely screwed and can expect a terrible, awful time. Fortunately for the player, you get to play the not-so-gracious host, who happens to be the Devil’s daughter. You’ll have a lot more fun than your uninvited guests, running from room to room crafting wicked plans and luring adventurers to their grisly demise.

Even with a hellish plot and the buckets of blood splashing around, the events taking place might contain more comedy than cruelty. Your advisors are anime-style patron demons of misery, and the interlopers banging down your door often exhibit such daft behavior that they easily become your playthings, plodding toward you with single-minded stupidity like lambs to the slaughter. Certain items like the classic banana peel feel like gags straight out of Looney Tunes… but even a humble fruit can propel your victim toward the next hazard. Pumpkins in particular can do wonders.

It’s something like a living chessboard, and the game can feel a bit clumsy. There’s a considerable learning curve stemming from the fact that the way your traps work in 3D space isn’t nearly as clean or simple as it looks when you’re laying them down on the grid. You often can’t tell exactly how a specific component performs without some trial and error, but it can be satisfying to finally work out a tricky design. Timing is also very important since you have to trigger each trap manually, and it can be tough to avoid attackers while also keeping an eye on your trap sequence at the same time.

but somehow the basic concept totally works. Devising devilish gauntlets of torture is sadistic fun, and new tools and environments open up enticing possibilities for constructing increasingly complicated ways of killing people off. It also helps that your victims have just enough personality to make you think about what you’re doing to them.

Apparently it takes all kinds to infiltrate a demon’s HQ. When each new character enters you’ll probably want to take a look at their profile to find out how they’ll attack you and whether or not they’re immune to any particular types of traps. While you’re there you might as well take a quick peek at their short bio.

A brief paragraph of text might reveal that person to be bigoted, disgustingly vain, or insufferably self-righteous. Other individuals feel so sad and pathetic you can practically hear the world’s smallest violin sighing away in the background. If you don’t feel like killing them, some characters will actually try to escape, and even the most determined foes can be softened up and captured in a cage for bonus points. It’s also possible to smash the armor of certain opponents, reducing a once-mighty knight to just some guy or gal standing around in their underwear.

The long and the short of it is that it feels good to be bad. The thrill of abusing and degrading these virtual people and the little twinges of guilt you might feel for enjoying it serve as a wonderful complement to the mental exercise of building a better deathtrap. Revenge can also be a powerful motivator. The “gotcha” moment when you seal the fate of a particularly annoying adversary that’s doggedly harassed you and forced you to restart your game is sweet indeed… and lasts as long as you can keep your devious combo of death in motion.

You’ll need to play through the story mode to experience everything the game has to offer, but you aren’t likely to get through it without suffering a bit yourself. An auto-defense ability functions as an easy mode, and without it the game can feel brutally tough. Before long your enemies will come after you with magic spells, teleports, leaps, and projectile attacks that intensify the game’s existing faults. It’s rewarding to clear a chapter, but the skewed difficulty means that if you want dish it out pain, you have to be willing to take it.

It’s also demoralizing that while there are several checkpoints within each chapter, you’ll have to admit defeat and go all the way back to the beginning if you want to swap out ineffective traps or swap out one ability for another. One really smart decision keeps this from really wrecking Deception’s playability -- the game gives you ample opportunity to play around…with people’s lives, of course. In addition to missions, and the opportunity to create and download quest scenarios that are shared with players online, there’s a free battle option. You pick out an arena of anguish, toss in a victim or two, and select your implements of punishment. Whatever happens after that won’t leave the room.

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